With daytime, snow emergency and street sweeping parking regulations finally settled, Marysville City Council hopes the enforcement mechanism will be in place soon.
City officials are hopeful a new parking app and system will be public later this month.
In July, officials from Fybr, an electronic parking platform, installed in-ground parking sensors on nearly 200 of the city’s two-hour parking spaces.
Since then, city officials have been working with the company to construct an customized app that will help those inside the city and those coming to the Uptown know where parking is available.
“We are still making sure the functionality and appearance of the app meets the needs of the community,” Public Service Director Jeremy Hoyt said.
Initially, city officials said they believed the system would be in place by Sept. 1.
“We have since figured out there is a bunch of back and for the between us and them,” City Engineer Kyle Hoyng said.
He said officials need to make sure the app works, that the information is correct and that it looks and is branded the way city officials want.
Hoyng said city officials are working through final revisions. He said there likely will be a one to two week testing period, “to make sure there is no kinks or bugs in the system before it goes live.”
He added that, “after that, we can roll it out to the public.”
Hoyt said that, “since it is new, it is imperative that we get it right the first time.”
City Police Chief Tony Brooks said that even when the system is live, officials want to have “an awareness campaign about the two hour parking limit, the areas it covers and the new technology for enforcement ahead of and during the initial deployment.”
He said written warnings will be a part of the public awareness campaign, “to attempt to gain compliance with the parking regulations without enforcement action being taken.”
The sensors, which are about the size of a hockey puck and lay flush with the ground, will be used to document when a vehicle parks and when it leaves. The system allows city officials to monitor when and where visitors are parking. If a vehicle has been in a space more than two hours, law enforcement can be notified to ticket the vehicle.
Brooks said the intent is not to issue citations to residents and customers in the Uptown area, but rather it is more about “turning over parking spots, in compliance with City Codified Ordinances, to allow those coming to the Uptown and surrounding areas to have available parking.”
“Likely violators will not get a citation at 2 hours and one minute,” Brooks said. “I don’t believe there is a hard/fast rule that at a certain amount of time an automatic issuance of a ticket will occur. I liken this to any other citation such as a speeding ticket or other violation, the officer has a certain amount of discretion in many instances whether to issue a warning or a citation.”
The two-hour parking spots are on Court, Main and Plum streets between Sixth and Fourth streets. The two-hour limit applies from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. During other hours, there is no time limit on parking.
Officials said it will cost about $51,000 for the purchase and installation of the system infrastructure and the 198 sensors. Each sensor also has a $9 per month fee for data connectivity, the mobile app, accessibility and warranty costs. A second phase of the system could eventually be added to cover about 150 parking spots in the public parking lots on Fourth and Sixth streets and at Partners Park
In addition to creating a mechanism to enforce the two-hour parking, city council recently passed legislation empowering the city manager or a representative to make emergency rules prohibiting parking in the Uptown, “due to an imminent or occurring weather precipitation event.”
Officials said that by having vehicles off the street, plows will be better able to remove snow.
The legislation will also prohibit parking on the Uptown between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Friday, “for the purposes of street sweeping.”